Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Spokane’s immigration inspector arrested several foreigners for deportation, including two Japanese men accused of running houses of prostitution out of their hotels on Trent Avenue and Main Avenue. The girls they employed were mostly “young white girls.”

A French couple was also arrested and held for deportation on the same charges. They, too, were running a Trent Avenue hotel. Two of the girls in the hotel were to be deported to Canada, one to Austria and one to England.

In a separate case, two Belgian women were arrested and held for deportation.

From the marriage beat: A well-dressed New York woman, about 40, walked out of a store with an armload of goods and deliberately had herself arrested for shoplifting. She told police that being sentenced to prison was preferable to her life as a housewife.

“If I had my choice today, at my age, I would rather spend 20 years in prison than 20 years as a household drudge,” she told a magistrate.

She said she was “starving for human kindness,” and the prison matron paid her more kindly attention than she had enjoyed for years.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1968: Feminists protested outside the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, N.J. (The pageant crown went to Miss Illinois, Judith Ford.)